Star Crossed
by Bons Baisers
Summary: Midou Ban has never believed in fairy tales or fate, and he doesn't believe in the hauntingly beautiful woman who has come to inhabit his dreams. But as his dreams become more vivid, he begins to wonder...
1. Midou Ban and the Invulnerable Woman

The Get Backers universe belongs to Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine.

**Star-Crossed**

Chapter One: Midou Ban and the Invulnerable Woman

If looks could kill, Midou Ban's sleeping partner would have died a very painful death at two forty-six a.m. on the morning of December seventeenth – Ban's twenty-first birthday.

Amano Ginji was, of course, sleeping soundly. There had been a time, back when they had first left Mujenjou together, that his sleep had been troubled, broken by terrible dreams and unfamiliar noises. Some of the terrors in his sleep he had refused to name; recognizing the horror with which his partner regarded those terrors, Ban had never pressed him to reveal the substance of his nightmares. In return, when he awakened from his own occasional horrors, Ginji would simply express his regrets that Ban had dreamt badly, and wait, quiet and uncharacteristically reserved, while Ban again sought slumber.

Tonight, though, Ban would have liked to have been able to discuss his dream, and his irritating partner was snoozing comfortably in the passenger's seat, oblivious.

That ought to have been proof enough that his dream was unusual. When Ban's old guilts and hurts surfaced in nightmares, Ginji inevitably wakened him. How Ginji knew when to do so was a puzzle Ban had never solved, and in fact, had stopped wondering about it entirely.

Until tonight.

To the best of his ability to recollect, Ban had never talked about his nightmares, not with Ginji, and not with anyone else. They generally consisted of strangely contorted memories, some half-forgotten and some starkly clear, but all so painful that it seemed they had been scored into the very essence of his being. Every once in a while, his phenomenal imagination dreamed up things that belonged in horror flicks, not in anyone's head. A part of him always knew that those dreams were false, however, so he really didn't mind them, he wasn't afraid. Remembered or imagined, very, very few nightmares had the power to frighten Midou Ban, who was the master of bad dreams.

This bad dream hadn't frightened him, not while he had been dreaming. He hadn't even been a part of it. Yet, he had witnessed it with such clarity, had been so emotionally engaged with the strangers in his mind, that the nightmare felt less like a dream than a vision, and now, wide-awake, he could admit to the little ripple of fear that shuddered down his spine.

It felt as though the Jagan had been used against him, as though something outside of his own brain had been forced into his mind. The dream itself had been strange, set in a place he had never been, but recognized, and unfolding in a language he had never heard, but which he understood.

Ginji hadn't wakened. Ban watched him with a sour frown for a moment before shoving his door open to step out of the Ladybug. Pulling his Marlboros from his shirt pocket, he cursed under his breath; only one cigarette remained. He lit up and leaned against the Ladybug's door, eyes fixed on the still-dark eastern horizon.

Finding the Ophiochus constellation, he scowled at it. His dream may have had nothing at all to do with the fact that he was the Serpent-bearer, but his instincts told him otherwise.

"Ban-chan?" Ginji murmured sleepily from the car.

"Just smoking, Ginji."

"It's three in the morning." His partner stretched tiredly, looking at Ban with worried eyes.

"I know that, doofus," he snapped. Then he relented; he had wanted Ginji awake, after all. "Sorry. Weird dream. I'm a little off." He took a long drag off his Marlboro.

Ginji got out of the car, and rounded the hood to stand beside Ban. "Weird, huh." It wasn't really a question, and a reluctant smile tugged at Ban's lips around the cigarette. Ginji wasn't exactly subtle; curious but unwilling to pry, the former thunder god was inviting Ban to share.

"Yeah, weird," he replied, and out of sheer devilry, he divulged nothing further, looking for the slightest shadow of aggravation on his partner's face. Ginji was hard to annoy – Ban sometimes felt it was one of his missions in life to discover a way to get under his partner's skin. He felt a twinge of guilt when disappointment rather than exasperation flickered in Ginji's eyes.

"I dreamed about a woman," he admitted, turning his eyes back up to the sky.

Ginji leaned against the car beside him. "What kind of a woman? A pretty woman?"

"Gorgeous," Ban answered candidly.

Ginji grinned. "Well, what's so weird about that? I dream about pretty girls all the time."

Ban rolled his eyes and snorted. "Her being pretty probably would have been a lot more interesting if there hadn't been a dozen people trying to kill her."

Ginji's smile fled. "Why?"

Ban huffed, blowing a cloud of smoke into the parking lot. "They were afraid." He tried not to smile as Ginji attempted seriousness. Ginji failed. Ban didn't.

"Maybe you should start at the beginning, Ban-chan."

He pursed his lips, took a final drag off the Marlboro, and began, half-reliving the dream as he spoke.

_Running. She was running, bare brown feet falling heavily on the flagstone, white linen robe and silky black hair flying out behind her as she fled. They were coming for her. He would not be spurned a second time._

_They called for her, and her feet fell harder and faster on the painted pavement._

_A door, a door, anyplace to hide._

_Her luck could not hold; the road ran out, disappeared in the limestone of the palace's southern wall._

_They dragged her back, pulled at her hair and slapped at her breasts when she defied them._

_He was waiting. _

Ban had been spared the details of the girl's rape, and omitted it entirely as he related the dream to Ginji.

_"So, my dear," the old man said when he had finished with her, "I am not good enough for the likes of Khaldun's daughter?"_

_For answer, she spat at him. He backhanded her almost absently, and sent her sprawling across the floor._

_"You're a fool," the old man noted matter-of-factly, "for I have powers most men dream of, but will not credit, even when they witness them with their own eyes. I will yet forgive you, and reward you with all of the things you most desire, if you will yield to me. If not, you'll be punished for your insolence."_

_"I will never yield," she said through gritted teeth. "I would rather die."_

_The old man lowered his face to her, his expression bemused. "There are many who would claim that death is a blessing. Before I have done with you, you will have joined them." _

_He beat her then, with his hands and with a cane rod designed specifically to raise welts, but not to draw blood. When he was done, he handed her a goblet of wine, his solicitousness at odds with his brutality. Weary and in pain, she took the cup without complaint and downed it. _

_And then she slept._

_When she wakened, she was laying on a stone slab, beneath a tent, an ibu, the so-called 'place of purification' in the complex of Anubis' temple. She smelled of palm wine and river water, and her fingers were sticky with sweet wine. A priest wearing the jackal mask approached; she heard a boy scream that its eyes had opened._

_It took her several moments to realize that 'it' meant her. The jackal-headed priest turned away, to calm the boy – an apprentice, presumably. "Sometimes the eyes do open. It is unimportant. Come, and I will teach you the most important first cut."_

_She bolted upright, and the boy and the jackal-headed priest screamed. She scrambled off of the slab, feeling as though she were going to be sick; the stench of death and natron filled her nostrils. Gagging, she stumbled away. _

_The screaming brought others, and they gathered round her like lionesses round an unexpectedly aggressive target. Someone thought to attack her with one of the sacred embalming knives, and she shrieked as the black obsidian of the holy implement fell upon her._

_It should have been a clean stroke, but the knife shattered into a thousand fragments of black glass against her skin._

_Her would-be murderer raced away, leaving others to attempt what he had been unable to do. Yet every blade that landed upon her met the same end as the first, and she was surrounded by priests and apprentices and black glass before she finally collapsed of exhaustion. _

_She woke again, in a room with four limestone walls painted with prayers for protection against Osiris' cursed. There were no windows. And there were no doors._

Ginji stared at him, wide-eyed. "It sounds like you were watching a movie, Ban-chan."

Ban nodded, watching the sky. It was an hour or more until dawn, but he fancied that the horizon looked a little brighter than it had. "I saw her one more time," he said, and couldn't suppress a slight shiver.

Ginji waited silently.

"She was standing alone in an empty city. I think it was probably a necropolis, a complex of tombs. She," he hesitated, "she was naked, but her hair had grown so long that it pooled in piles at her feet, and it mostly covered her up, even her face." Telling Ginji about the girl's nudity wrenched at him painfully, as if somehow he had betrayed her. That thought disturbed him, so he went on. "Then the wind picked up."

He shoved his hands in his pockets. "The wind picked up, just before I woke. And it blew her hair out of her face and out behind her, and it seemed like it went on forever, it was so long, even matted and tangled. It was easily a lifetime's growth. More." Looking away from the sky, he looked at his now genuinely serious partner. "But, Ginji, she hadn't aged a day."


	2. Midou Ban and the Forsaken Woman

**Star-Crossed**

Chapter Two: Midou Ban and the Forsaken Woman

The striking realism of Ban's vision so troubled him that he barely acknowledged the arrival of Ginji's friend, and his longtime rival, Fuyuki Shido. He managed a scowl when the Beast-Master jerked his thumb at him and asked a quiet question of his partner. He sipped at his coffee, ignoring the whispered conversation, ignoring a worried looking Natsumi, ignoring the occasional curious glance Paul shot at him. Instead, he watched the night beyond the windows, avoiding his eyes' reflection in the glare.

It wasn't so much that he identified with the girl in his dream as it was the fact that her world felt entirely familiar and recognizable, and it shouldn't have. He remembered the scent of palm wine, though he couldn't remember ever having heard of palm wine before, and he knew the gruesome uses of the obsidian knives at the place of purification. The hieroglyphs on the walls of the room with no doors held no mysteries for him; he knew the names of the gods depicted there, and not just the famous ones like Osiris and Horus, but obscure gods he was certain he hadn't known prior to his dream.

Ban had a great imagination. And he toyed with the idea that he had invented the whole story for himself, though to what end he couldn't conceive. However, a quick internet search on a library computer had revealed the existence of palm wine, and its uses in preparing a body for mummification; another verified the existence of the gods he had not been familiar with. He had spent much of the day pondering the dream, and what it meant. He hadn't even scolded his partner when Ginji slunk away from their street corner where he was supposed to be handing out fliers.

"Hey. You gonna pay for that tonight?" Paul asked, folding his newspaper in half. He didn't sound especially hopeful, but there wasn't much of a bite in his tone, either.

"Hmm? Oh." Ban dug in his pocket, absently surprised to find enough change there to cover the coffee, and a little more besides.

Paul's eyebrows went up, but he took the change without asking questions, and retreated behind the bar, evidently resolved not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It was possible, Ban mused, eyes fixed on the bright lights of a supermarket a ways down the street, that he had picked up those random pieces of information over the years, and forgotten them; it was possible that something had triggered his brain to consolidate them in that surprisingly coherent narrative.

At least, Ban hoped it was possible. Because if it wasn't, something else had planted that story in his head, and though that thought infuriated him, it also frightened him. Badly. Ban had a lot of experience messing with people's heads, and it wasn't a job just anyone could do. Disturbing a person's sense of reality carried a risk of unbalancing their minds completely, and he found the idea that someone else could be molding the substance of his dreams disconcerting, to say the least.

They left the Honky Tonk at around ten, and drove out to Ginji's favorite park to sleep. It was nearly winter but still fairly comfortable outside, so they had been forgoing the cheap motels they usually slept in during the winter months. Ban really almost preferred it out here; the only person near was Ginji, rather than all the strangers sleeping about them at the hotel. A self-diagnosed misanthropist and all around cynic, Ban found the solitude comforting enough to excuse the cramped sleeping arrangements.

Ginji usually fell asleep first. The sound of his slow, even breath had a calming effect on his partner, and Ban almost always followed Ginji into a slumber within a few minutes. He had never found sleep so easily when he had been alone.

Tonight, though, even the sound of Ginji's breathing couldn't put to rest the tumult of his mind, and it was very late, well after midnight, before he finally did drop off.

_"East! North!"_

_A girl with red hair and sun-kissed skin stood on the very edge of a long, flat barge, which slid almost lazily through the Nile's sparkling waters. Long and slim and lovely, she raised a hand to the desert, to the necropolis. _

_Across the river, the figure of a woman stood fully nude, her silhouette pallid against the sand and the limestone, her impossibly long hair carried on a heavy wind toward the water._

_"East! To me!" _

_A tall man with strangely shaped eyes came to stand at the water's edge with her. He was a foreigner, and dressed in foreign, outlandish garb. Another followed; he was much shorter, but more heavily muscled. His face was very stern. _

_"What is that?" She gestured to the necropolis. _

_The grim-faced shorter man shook head, and the carnelian beads braided into his heavy wig clinked together softly. "One of the accursed, Lady."_

_"Accursed?"_

_"Osiris' Cursed."_

_"I have never heard of such a thing."_

_The taller man would have held his tongue, but the girl turned to him. _

_"East? What do you know of this accursed woman?"_

_"It is said she offended Osiris, and that he will not take her into the Underworld." His words were tinged with bitterness._

_"You do not believe that." She raised a strong, wide chin, questioning._

_"Choose your words carefully, East," the man called North said warningly. "You have trespassed upon the borders of blasphemy one too many times already."_

_"I have found, Lady," East said, ignoring the other man, "that the prejudices of gods generally follow those of their worshippers."_

_"A priest's curse, then," the girl said. Her liquid brown eyes filled with sadness._

_"Most probably."_

_"Priests have good cause for their doings," North said, that same warning in his voice, "as you both would do well to remember." _

_"I am a priestess," the girl retorted, "and you continually challenge my reasoning, North. I cannot be the only servant of the gods who does not always do what she ought."_

_The muscular man flushed, but found no words with which to reply._

_Another man came to them, a dark-skinned Nubian. He wore a placating smile on his full mouth. "Yet even the most impulsive of your actions always seem to bear good fruit, Lady. Surely the gods smile on you, enough to forgive your impetuosity."_

_"It is because Lady Rehema's heart is pure." The bitterness had left East's tone, replaced with a deep affection._

_"And the pure heart you believe I possess is enough to guide my footsteps, is it?" The girl considered, and then she smiled, a bright, happy smile that matched the burning desert sun for intensity. "I certainly hope the two of you are right." _

_With that, she shed her linen robe, and had dropped neatly into the water before her attendants could stop her._

_They called after her, and began to strip themselves of their own heavy garments and adornments. Yet she seemed at home in the water, and surpassed them easily; her long athletic limbs carried her through the river with the strength of the crocodiles or hippopotami that lurked beneath its glittering surface. _

_The long-haired woman turned to the sound of the girl in the water. Eyes of dark gold reflected the light from the water, crazed and brilliant with loneliness. Her too-thin body shambled to its feet, shuffling awkwardly away from the girl in the water._

_"Wait!" Lady Rehema pulled herself from the river and called after the other woman, who rushed to hide herself among the tombs and temples of the Theban necropolis._

_"Wait, I will not harm you!" Rehema pursued the awkward creature on nimble feet. "Please, do not be afraid."_

_She tried to hide herself in the crevice between two mastabas, but she had already been seen._

_Rehema approached slowly, in the manner of one who seeks to comfort a frightened animal. "Won't you come out? No one will harm you."_

_She shivered alone in the crevice._

"_Lady!" East proved the quickest; he reached Rehema and grasped the red-haired girl by the arm. She shook him off, fire glinting off her coppery locks. "What were you thinking, Lady?"_

_The woman with long hair moaned softly, terrified of the strangers. Though compassion briefly flooded the strange-eyed man's face, his eyes became hard, and he grasped Rehema again, and made as if to drag her bodily back to the barge. As they argued, the frightened woman tried to slip away, to pass Rehema and East for the anonymity of the necropolis, but North had joined them._

"_Begone, foul creature," North spat, and she shrank back into her crevice._

_Rehema and East broke off their arguing to stare at North, whose face was contorted with apprehension._

"_Leave her, Lady," North said, in a voice neither that held neither plea nor command, only great certainty. "It is not for us to question the gods."_

_East's dark eyes turned to Rehema for direction as the Nubian, West, and another man joined them in the necropolis. _

"_It is not for you to question me," she replied after a moment, her tone much gentler than her words._

_At that moment, the longhaired woman burst from her hiding place to rush between Rehema and her four attendants. North raised a fist to her, and would have struck her. Reheman pulled the frantic woman into her arms, and held her tightly when she struggled._

_A great wind rose around the two women, crackling with energy, and a whirlwind of sand separated them from Rehema's attendents. The longhaired woman clung to Rehema against the wind, obviously terrified. Her eyes of dark gold brimmed with fear and madness, her beautiful face contorted in unseen agonies._

"_Let me be clear, to all who stand here, and to all who serve the gods." Rehema declared, authority pulsing through her words. "This woman is now under the protection of the high priestess of the god of storms, mighty Set, who rules the desert. Let no man raise his hands to her, and let no man speak against her. If Osiris will not have her, let her instead be taken to the bosom of the red god of chaos; if the Halls of the Dead will not welcome her, may she find peace in the storming sands of Osiris' eternal enemy, Set, the guardian of the great barque, the slayer of the celestial serpent."_

"Ban-chan!"

Ban woke drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. Ginji's usually bright eyes were dull with sleep and dark with worry as he gripped his partner's shoulder. Ban shoved at his partner, and then at his door, sinking to the pavement outside the Ladybug. It had turned colder, but Ban didn't care.

"Ban-chan." Ginji sounded uncertain as he approached. Ban dropped his head back against the door, shaking away the tremendous power he had felt in his dream. He could almost feel the sand whipping at his hair, could see the glimmer of frightened tears on the longhaired woman's face, the flash of lightning in Rehema's eyes. Her gaze had been all too familiar, when the winds had begun to stir, filled with a darkness neither evil nor indifferent, but wholly sad.

Ginji gripped his chin lightly between his thumb and forefinger, gently turning his head, forcing Ban to look at what he had been trying to avoid seeing. "Ban-chan?"

At that moment, in the whirlwind of sand, in the fullness of her power, Rehema's eyes had been Raitei's.

"It was only a bad dream, Ginji," Ban said, shoving Ginji's hand away, looking at his shoes.

"Was it about that girl again?"

Ban said nothing, but banged a fist on the ground beside him. Ginji took a seat, and they sat together in silence for a long while.

He must be inventing this tale, to so superimpose Ginji's alter-ego on an imagined priestess of Set. It made sense, he told himself; it was a logical juxtaposition. After all, Set had been the ancient Egyptian god of the desert, and as such, bringer of the sandstorms. Eventually he had come to be identified with other Asian gods, a god of storms in a more generic sense. It made perfect sense that he would see his partner reflected in the eyes of one of Set's servants. Dreams were the compilation and reorganization of one's living experiences, after all; the appearance of something of Raitei surely confirmed that the dream had originated from within.

Except, why was he dreaming of ancient Egypt at all? He knew no one in his visions, he had no self-awareness in the dreams, only a queer empathy with the seemingly deranged, longhaired woman, a sensitivity to her thoughts and mood. He could generally recognize his dreams as his subconscious efforts to compose his memories and his experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Except for Rehema's Raitei eyes, the whole thing felt entirely foreign.

Rehema. God. He was calling them by name, now. Then he shivered again, because there were a couple of things that had felt foreign that shouldn't have. The strange-eyed man was the only one with Asian eyes, and that should have struck as anything but unfamiliar. And Rehema's identification of Set as the 'slayer of the celestial serpent' should have upset him, but it didn't, not until after he had awakened.

All of which pointed to the dream being the product of someone else's mind.

He turned to Ginji, but Ginji was no longer there.

Ban could not repress a shudder. Had he been so deeply sunk in his thoughts that Ginji had been able to slip away, entirely undetected? Ginji? Who botched every other job because he couldn't keep his mouth shut? What if it had not been Ginji who so escaped his notice? What if it had been Akabane, or someone equally dangerous? What if it had been Fuyuki or the Thread-spool? He would have had to endure the knowledge that they had snuck up on him forever.

That upset him worse than the dream, and in his aggravation, he almost pounced on his partner when he returned.

He'd brought his fist within a centimeter of the top of Ginji's head before he realized his partner was carrying something.

"Sheesh, Ban-chan, I just went to get you some juice from the vending machine," Ginji wondered, ducking out from underneath Ban's suddenly frozen hand. "I hoped it might help you go back to sleep. Ban lowered his hand, and Ginji gave him a bottle of purple juice.

He popped the cap and took a long drink. "You didn't have to do that. We don't really have the money to spare, anyway."

Ginji shrugged. "We won't get more if you're too tired to do anything tomorrow," he pointed out reasonably, though Ban could tell that Ginji's decision hadn't had a thing to do with that line of reasoning. Ban had been tired and upset, and Ginji thought a cold drink might make him feel better. He'd probably come up with this excuse on his way back from the drink machine, realizing that his ingrate of a partner wouldn't appreciate the gesture.

Ban considered revealing what he knew of the sometimes muddled workings of Ginji's mind, but decided against it. "Thanks," he said instead.

Ginji grinned brightly. Being thanked by the invincible Midou Ban-sama was a rare treat.

They sat down together at a picnic table not far from where they had parked. Ginji yawned and stretched and blinked sleepily while his partner sipped on the juice, trying to decide how much, if any, to tell Ginji of his dream and his suspicions surrounding it.

"So?" Ginji asked finally.

"So… it was the same girl," Ban said, deciding to be honest about the dream sequence, at least. "And another one, a red-head."

Ginji grinned rapturously. "A red-head, huh? I'm jealous, Ban-chan."

Ban groaned and pulled his hands through his spikes, mussing them a little, but not really caring. "Just listen, okay?"

Ginji pressed his lips tightly together and mimed zipping them. Ban rolled his eyes, and narrated the dream for his partner, omitting how Rehema's eyes had resembled Raitei's.

"So she lost her mind because of the loneliness." Ginji's voice was very soft. "How sad."

Ban said nothing. In the dream, in the moment, it certainly seemed that she had been out of her mind. But thinking back, removed from the sterile, artificial, and – he hated to think it – _forced_ dream-state, he wasn't sure. Sometimes people who had been isolated for a long time could readjust, with enough time and encouragement. She had seemed frightened of people, but only when they approached – she had been watching the boat, before Rehema had jumped out. And if her experience with the priests at the temple of Anubis had been any indication, she had good reason to fear people. It was a gut feeling, but Ban had long since questioning his instincts. She wasn't a complete basket-case. Hadn't been.

Ban groaned. He was dissecting the mental state of a woman he didn't know, moreover, that of a nonexistent woman who – even if she existed – would have lived over four thousand years ago.

Ginji changed the subject, and brightened. "So the red-haired girl – Rehema – could control wind? Like Paul?"

"Or sand, or something. I don't know. But it was enough to really upset the four guys with her, and really scare the woman with the long hair." They were sitting on the tabletop; Ban drew a knee up to his chest, and wrapped the arm holding the juice bottle around it.

"I have to get to the bottom of these dreams, Ginji."

"I know."

Ban smiled, albeit a little feebly. "Why? Why do you know that?"

Ginji blinked in confusion, and opened his mouth, but Ban cut him off. "You know what? Never mind. The question was mostly rhetorical, anyway."

Ginji nodded furiously. His agreement was so enthusiastic that Ban closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable question.

"Ban-chan?'

"Mmmm."

"What's 'rhetorical?'"


	3. Midou Ban and the Mourning Woman

The Get Backers belong to their creators, not to me.

**Midou Ban and the Mourning Woman**

Ban knew only one person – at least, only one person who didn't want to kill him – who might have some answers about his peculiar dreams. But he couldn't face her without coffee, and so it was that the Get Backers found themselves, once again, at the Honky Tonk.

"Ban! Ginji! Are you back already?" Natsumi greeted them with an enormous grin.

"Shouldn't you two be out looking for work?" Paul asked mildly, not even glancing up from his paper.

"Can it, old man." Ban took a seat at the bar, and Ginji flopped down beside him.

"Did you guys want breakfast?" Rena asked. Ginji tried to smile and Ban leaned away from her.

"Are you cooking?" he asked warily.

Paul did look up from his paper at that, but only briefly. "She isn't, not that it matters. I only make breakfast for paying customers."

"Can I get breakfast for them?" Natsumi tugged at Paul's apron string, and the café owner sighed.

"Do you ever take home any of your paycheck, Natsumi?" he demanded. A smile was her only answer, and Paul relented.

"Fine, I'll put it on your tab. But only because I don't want Natsumi to starve." He folded the paper and knelt to open the refrigerator beneath the bar. "Actually," he said, rummaging around below, "it's probably a good thing you're here. Someone came looking for you yesterday, just after you left. And she did say she would be back this morning."

"Anything interesting?"

"She didn't say. But beggars can't be choosers."

Ban scowled at the older man, who ignored him and began to cook. Natsumi poured coffee for both Get Backers, blushing prettily when Ginji beamed his too-cheerful-for-early-morning smile at her. She wiped counters and washed dishes, chattering animately with his partner while he sipped on his coffee, waiting for their possible client.

They didn't have too long to wait. Comfortably full and armed with an actual plan-of-the-day for once, Ban was gratified when the tinkling bell on Paul's door announced the entrance of an obviously distraught young woman.

As she related her story, Ban found relief in having something other than his dreams to focus on. The girl's boyfriend had proposed earlier that week, but her engagement ring had been slightly too large, and she dropped it. The night before, she had participated in a festival at one of Tokyo's shrines, and the ring had fallen into one of the shrine's fountains. She felt positive that the ring was still there - it wasn't clearly visible - but could not search for it herself. Her parents were taking her to Europe for two weeks as an engagement gift, and they were leaving early the next day.

"Please, my fiancé would be so upset if he found out. I won't see him today, and I'm leaving first thing in the morning, but I know he'll meet me at the airport when I come back. I have to have it before I leave." The girl was obviously well-to-do, and considering how easy the job was likely to be, the reward was actually pretty generous.

"We'll find it," Ginji promised. "Don't worry about a thing."

"Leave it to us," Ban affirmed confidently.

The Get Backers left the Honky Tonk and went directly to the shrine to keep their promise. Getting in proved a little tricky; the shrine was closed to the public. But they were the Get Backers, and locked gates could hardly be considered obstacles. The small staff that cared for the shrine never made an appearance, and they more or less had free rein over the more secluded areas of the complex.

The fountain that had swallowed her ring was not the garden fountain they had expected, but a rather large pond with an artful spray of water streaming up from its center. They spent most of the day up to their knees in the cold water, combing through the sandy banks of the pool. A number of interesting things turned up in their search: coins, jewelry – nothing as valuable as the lost engagement ring, which had boasted a substantial diamond, a couple of pairs of sunglasses, and, bizarrely, a pair of panties and a rusted, water-logged – but still loaded – revolving pistol.

It was nearing nightfall before they found the girl's ring.

"Ban-chan!" Ginji called in a singsong voice. "It was platinum, right?"

"Yeah."

"With a big pink diamond?"

"Yeah."

"And engraved with 'Pookie?'"

"Poo… what?"

Ginji thrust a triumphant fist into the air, and Ban caught the unmistakable sparkle of a diamond in dying light.

"Good job, Ginji," he congratulated his partner. He pulled a face; now that their objective had been completed, he had leave to notice just how cool it had become. "Brrr. Let's return that and get our reward."

"And dinner," Ginji agreed fervently.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" When they returned the lost ring, the girl crammed it onto her finger and beamed at them. "They said you were the best. Believe me, I'll be recommending you to my friends."

She cut them a check for 50,000 yen and sent two very self-satisfied Get Backers on their way.

"An easy job, for once," Ban exulted around a mouthful of grouper.

Ginji nodded his agreement with enthusiasm and dug into his sashimi. "No Yakuza."

"No idiot Hevn getting us in over our heads."

Ginji swallowed. "No Akabane."

"No mind-altering drugs, personal vendettas, or magic."

"No Akabane."

Ban chuckled, feeling magnanimous. "You said that already, dummy."

"I'm extra-happy about that," Ginji returned with a grin.

Ban closed his eyes in sheer bliss. "And none of your stupid friends complicating things! No Thread Spool! No Monkey Trainer!"

It was a sign of how happy Ginji was that he didn't even argue the point, just continued to plow through his food.

When they had eaten their fill and had begun to slow down, Ginji leaned back in the chair across from Ban and gnawed on the inside of a cheek anxiously.

"But, Ban-chan," he said, "You know, we didn't make it to Maria's. Are you going to be okay tonight?"

Ban made a rude sound by way of response, but really, he wasn't sure. Having something to do had kept thoughts of the longhaired woman from his head, but she'd shown up in his dreams the past two nights. "Don't worry about it," he told his partner. "We'll get to Maria in the morning."

"If you say so, Ban-chan." Ginji didn't look any more convinced than Ban felt.

They opted to stay in the Ladybug again, even though they could have splurged on a motel. Soon it would get colder, and sleeping in the Ladybug would get a lot less comfortable the colder it got outside. Ban parked – illegally, for the sake of appearances – beside a decorative water sculpture near an office building, feeling specially good-willed toward fountains.

Of course, about as soon as his eyes fell closed, the dreams began again.

_The braids of the wig that adorned her shaven head swayed ponderously as Merit-Set watched the dying sun fall, and she often reached up to touch them. _

_Rehema had called for a razor, after declaring her protected status there in the Theban necropolis, and had shorn her dark, tangled hair from her head. The hair remained among the tombs, along with her old life and her old name; she was Merit-Set, now, a name Rehema had given her, a name that identified her as 'Set's Beloved.'_

_Now, only three years later, Rehema, beautiful, innocent, perfect Rehema was dead. Tonight was the interment ceremony for Rehema's mummy; she would lie forever beneath the temple grounds, hidden in a rock-cut tomb for eternity, guarding the temple she had served in life._

_Merit-Set cared nothing for the god of chaos for whom Rehema had named her. Rehema was her chosen deity._

_"There will be a storm tonight," East told her grimly, breaking into her thoughts and seating himself beside her on the temple steps. "The animals are frantic with anticipation."_

_"It is also written in the sky, if you had eyes to see it. Rehema is bidding us goodbye, Beast-Who-Is-Not-A-Man." _

_He turned disapproving eyes on her. "Why do you insist on that name? She asked you not to use it."_

_"Because you had so many more years with her than I. Because you defended her, and I was not able to do so. Because she loved you." Bitterness rose in her throat, and she lowered her face into her hands._

_East's voice echoed her bitterness. "It was you she showered her affection on, you she reserved her sweetest smiles for. You were her greatest triumph, she said, the lost thing she retrieved from the shadows. She loved you as well, Merit-Set."_

_"Don't call me that. Set destroyed her, the moment she used his power in full. I want no part of the red god who took her from me. I am Merit only, now." _

_She rose and crossed her arms over her breasts, holding herself against the approaching squall. _

_"She protected the city, and fulfilled her duties. Her sacrifice ensured the survival of thousands, and I had rather she die happy than live in regret – you, of all people, should understand that." As East spoke, the resentment faded from his tone, to be replaced by an aching sorrow._

_Merit nodded, and a solitary tear slipped down her face, black and dirty with the khol that rimmed her eyes. "What will you do, now, East? Where will you go?"_

_East came to his feet and stood beside her, fixing his eyes on the sands that had begun to swirl in the distance. "I traveled ten years to come here, over oceans and deserts, driven by a nameless desire. I found satisfaction in serving her. Perhaps it is time I returned home."_

_Merit nodded stiffly. "Carry my best wishes with you, then. I will not send you away as an enemy. Rehema," she choked on her name, "would not have wished for that."_

_"Come with me." _

_"With you?"_

_"There is nothing for you in the Black Land now. The Shiki clans know something of being outcast. You may find peace with us, for a time."_

_Merit breathed deeply of the evening air, charged with the energy of the coming storm. _

"_She would have liked that, for you and me to come to an accord." _

"_That was my thought." _

_The winds had approached near enough to disturb her heavy wig, as if Rehema herself were urging her to accept. Merit had never questioned Rehema's judgment. She didn't now._

"_Then let us be gone, Beast-Who-Is-Not-A-Man." She attempted a smile, and he attempted to return it._

"_Shall we not wait until after she is buried?"_

"_No. She claimed me from the desert. I will not watch the desert take her."_

* * *

_"I'm sorry, Merit."_

_"Idiot. Don't apologize for such things."_

_"Yet I am sorry. You alone must carry her memory, now."_

_"Until men are myths, my friend," Merit swore, taking his spotted, withered finger in her slim young hand, fresh and healthy and brown with the sun._

_"Merit…" East's breath came and went like a ragged wind. This day had been many years in the making, and they both knew the end drew near._

_"Shush. Save your strength for your children."_

_"I never… hated you. I never… wanted you to have to continue alone."_

_"I am destined to be alone," she replied simply._

_"Yes… But, a final gift, for you… my friend. May your own strength protect you… from the solitude… from the centuries." He raised his frail hand to her face, a face as smooth and taut as it had been the day they met in the Theban necropolis. "My friend... Awake."_

Ban groaned as his dreams wakened him for the third night in a row. The Shiki clans? He'd convinced himself that the dreams had been fabricated by another; now, he was more confused than ever.

Rehema's nature and power spoke strongly of Ginji; East had to represent Fuyuki. Come to think of it, the priestess had possessed four companions – four guards, as it were.

Did that make him Merit-Set… Merit? The outsider, who stole the charismatic, would-be martyr from his former comrades?

No, that didn't make sense. While it was true that he seemed to empathize with her, he couldn't make himself believe that he was unconsciously casting himself as a woman who had lived during the Middle Kingdom period of Egypt. Other than the people they knew, they had nothing in common. Nothing.

Ginji snorted softly in his sleep. Ban watched him for a long while, as if he were memorizing his partner's face, the rhythm of his breath, the way his eyes shifted slightly in whatever dreams occupied his slumber. His mind insisted on replaying the scenes from Merit's life as he did so; Rehema's death disturbed him. She was too like Ginji, Merit and East too like himself and Fuyuki. Watching the moments before Rehema's interment shook him more deeply than he cared to admit. Three years was such a short time.

Dream, vision, or otherwise, this night's images would remain concealed in the dark places of the Snake Bearer's memory, well away from his happy-go-lucky partner.

Ban silently slid the key into the ignition and started the car. Ginji didn't stir as Ban pulled away from the fountain and merged onto the almost empty street beyond.

What was it East had said? That Rehema had found the lost Merit in the darkness and retrieved her? Glancing at his slumbering partner, Ban almost believed that East's words reverberated so deeply within his soul that they had to have sprung from his own, secret thoughts.

Almost.

In the city, with its cars and sirens, its heaters venting from office buildings and apartment towers, and its occasional whistling, rumbling trains, there is a continual mechanical hum that passes for silence in the evenings. Ban had known silence in all its forms. He had explored underground caverns where the silence was deafening, the weight of the stale air a constant reminder that one had been swallowed by the earth. He had experienced the silence of the outdoors – of the forests, where birds and animals and the rustle of leaves ensured that one was never entirely alone, as well as the silence of wide-open spaces, where one was accompanied by nothing but the wind. He knew the pregnant stillness that could divide one from friends and enemies alike; he knew it so well that he generally could foretell what the silence preceded: a fight, a revelation, an ending.

Yes, Ban recognized many of the infinite faces of silence. Never before this moment, however, had his own intellect failed to engage him. A thousand possibilities and courses of action should have flooded his thoughts. His frustration should have been met with a scorching anger and an even more intense curiosity.

But as Ban guided the Ladybug to Maria's home, he could think of nothing but Merit. The empty expanse of lonely years that had awaited her upon East's death consumed his mind, and he could feel nothing but the loss of Rehema, whom she had loved. Within his genius, his own voice failed to rise above the echoes of Merit's solitary existence and her terrible sorrows.

Whether by another's devising or by his own folly, Ban was becoming obsessed. And he was afraid.

* * *

Oh, I know. An evil place to leave. If you want more, click on the little options menu bar to your left and leave your questions, commments, snide remarks, etc. :) I hope you're enjoying my little forays into the past; I've always had a passion for historical fiction. There will be little tidbits of other times and places as the story progresses, so if you'd like to see a favorite era represented, just leave a review or send me a message, and I'll try to accomodate you.


	4. Midou Ban and the Bound Woman

If you've ever looked up Asclepius or Ophiochus, then you know some of the mythology referenced in this chapter. I did take certain liberties with the myth ahem for the purposes of the story. In a nutshell, Asclepius was a son of Apollo and a physician who became so skillful that he was able to bring the dead back to life. For this challenge to the natural order of things, Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt. To honor his importance to mankind, however, he placed him in the sky as the constellation Ophiochus, which means Serpent-Bearer. The constellation refers to Asclepius' rod, a staff entwined with a single serpent, which is now a well-known symbol of the medical professions. (Anybody else catch that the Thunder God was the one to take him out? Eep!) As always, the Get Backers belong to Rando Ayamine and Yuya Aoki.

**Midou Ban and the Bound Woman**

A string of multilingual curses coursed through the cold alley as the Ladybug sputtered to a halt. The hustle and bustle of the big city had abruptly and inexplicably died not two minutes before, as if the Get Backers had crossed an invisible barrier that separated the old witch's neighborhood from the rest of the city. Even so, there were still five miles or more to Maria's. The dark, narrow streets, so queerly separated from the rest of Tokyo, were dangerous for outsiders. Ban did not count himself as an outsider, exactly, but in this part of town, self-perception wasn't the issue at hand. The smalltime thugs that haunted the alleys were sure to put in an appearance. Not that he was especially concerned about them.

But he was irritable, and sleepy, and confused as hell, and the last thing he wanted was to be stuck in this creepy place with pointless but inevitable violent encounters looming over him and blocking his path to Maria, and to some answers.

"Ban-chan," Ginji said, with a maddening, wheedling note in his voice, "Relax. With everything that's being going on, it's no wonder you forgot to get the oil changed. At least you made it into a parking space, so we won't get a ticket, right? And it can't be that far to Maria's."

Ban glared at his partner, who cowed under his blue stare. "I'll shut up now," Ginji said in a small voice.

"Do that," Ban replied from behind clenched teeth.

The roar of another vehicle saved Ginji from his flaring temper, because sitting astride the motorbike that had pulled up beside them was someone who annoyed Ban even more than the Thunder Emperor.

"For someone who claims to love their car, you sure don't take very good care of it," Himiko noted clinically, cocking her head to one side. "Smells like she's bone-dry. Poor girl." She patted the trunk of the car sympathetically. "You deserve better than this hotheaded, unstable excuse for a driver, Ladybug."

"Now's not the best time, Himi-chan," Ginji told her, wincing.

"You snot-nosed breast-less little brat!" Ban threw open his door and lunged for her, but he was tired, and she was as fresh as new-fallen snow. He landed hard on the concrete, adding two scraped elbows and one badly abraded forearm to his other miseries.

The flash of concern that leapt into Himiko's eyes was quickly drowned by a scathing disinterest. "If you're going to see Maria, Ginji," she said, an evil smirk tugging at her lips, "I wouldn't mind giving you a lift."

"Ban-chan's the one that needs to see Maria, Himi-chan. I'm just along for the ride, this time." Ginji waved his hands in front of himself.

"What's wrong, Ban-_chan_?" she said, laying an outrageous emphasis on the suffix. "Poor widdle Ban-chan got magical woes?"

Ban ground his teeth together and pulled his lips back over them in a fair approximation of Shido Fuyuki's beastly snarl. "Yes."

That caught her off-guard, as he had intended it should. She stared at him, obviously curious, and not at all sure how to save face and still wriggle out his secret. Finally she shrugged. "Me too."

"_I _didn't ask," he pointed out in a dismissive tone, picking himself up from the street. "_I_ don't care."

"Ban-chan…" Ginji started weakly, looking at Himiko, who had turned bright red.

"Well…" she floundered for a moment. "I don't care that you don't care!" It sounded very silly, and Himiko's flush darkened dangerously with her rising embarrassment.

Ban ignored the danger and mocked her, imitating her tone without forming coherent words. "Ne ne ne ne ne ne ne." She raised a hand as if to slap him, he raised a hand to block it, and Ginji darted in between them, just in time to catch the brunt of the blow.

Her eyes went wide in a wordless apology as Ginji gingerly inspected his now-red jaw line.

"You two are just sad." Both Ban and Himiko took at step back at the surprising flatness in his voice. He stared at his feet. "You don't even know how lucky you are to have each other." The flat quality in Ginji's voice was replaced by something infinitely worse, and as sadness bled into his tone, the hostility in the air evaporated into an awkward silence.

Then Ginji looked up, abashed. "Sorry, guys. I think I'm tired. Forget I said anything." He smiled.

Ginji's emotional quick-change routine amused his partner sufficiently to cool his temper, and Ban reached out to ruffle two heads of hair by way of apology. "So, Himiko, if we're all headed in the same direction anyway…?"

She rolled her eyes, but the angry flush had faded from her cheeks. "I've always got extra oil. Maybe you didn't ruin the engine. Cross your fingers."

Himiko retrieved the oil from her motorbike – today without the sidecar – and popped the hood for Ban, who was relieved to find that the car had stopped before the lack of lubrication made the engine completely unsalvageable. With just a little luck, they could get it to Maria's and maybe even to a shop before it died.

They managed to start the Ladybug, and Ban followed Himiko through the twisting alleys that led to his former caretaker's home. Unsurprisingly, the old witch stood at her doorway, as beautiful and falsely perfect as ever in her gypsy-queen guise.

"Both of you together, eh?" She stretched her long body languidly, crooking a finger at Himiko, who approached her as bidden. "I have to admit, I was only expecting you, dear." Maria enfolded the slim young woman in her arms, pressing her uncomfortably close to her ample bosom.

Himiko pulled free and gestured at Ban. "You can deal with him, first, then. I'd just as soon keep my affairs to myself."

Ban glowered at her. "As if I wouldn't?"

Ginji coughed, and both Ban and Himiko looked away, each a trifle shamefaced.

Maria laughed. "Oh, beautifully done, Ginji-kun. Superb. If I'd known it was that easy to shut him up, his time with me might have gone much more smoothly."

A knowing grin lit up Ginji's face.

Ban flicked his forefinger against the back of Ginji's skull with a very satisfying _thwomp_.

"Be nice, now, Ban. Seeing as Himiko-chan did actually make an appointment to see me, I think I'll accede to her wishes tonight." She tilted her head back so that the bright evening lights of the city glinted off her eyes. The effect was startling, almost menacing. "What can I do for you, my little one?"

"You can start by not calling me that." Ban grunted and hauled himself up onto the railing of Maria's porch. He looked out into the night, trying to sort out the significant bits of his dreams, things he should reveal, and things he shouldn't.

He felt Maria's eyes boring down on him, heard her dismiss Ginji and Himiko with an offering of whatever was in her refrigerator – "Don't open the green jars, dears" – and felt her return to his side, waiting for him to collect his thoughts.

When he had, he looked down at her from the railing. "I've been having these dreams," he began, and as Maria moved closer, he rattled off the events he had witnessed in his sleep over the past few nights.

"It would be better if I were able to see your visions for myself," she told him bluntly when he had finished. "There are certain indicators that you can really only notice from the outside."

Ban nodded. "I wake up, and I _know_ that there are things in those dreams that I can't have imagined for myself. There are revelations that I don't respond to like I should.

"But then again, Rehema and the four guardians would almost have to represent Ginji and the Kings. Especially considering that one of them was from the Shiki clans. And happened to have the Fuyuki ability."

"Did you consider that it could be a mixture of the two?" Maria asked, tapping a thoughtful finger on Ban's thigh. "That your subconscious could be expanding and elaborating on dreams someone else has planted in you?"

Ban shook his head. "I hadn't, but I doubt it. There's a definite sense of continuity. Whether they're mine or someone else's, the dreams are all related. I want to believe I'm inventing them." He winced inwardly as he admitted that last.

"It's possible, Ban, but plausibility doesn't eliminate the other possibility – that these dreams are not your own creation. And if they're not, you seem to be frighteningly vulnerable to someone else's influence. It's not a risk I would take. And it isn't a risk I could fathom you taking, either."

Ban cursed. "How can I be sure?"

She shrugged, a smooth, sensual ripple of flesh and muscle that made her half-exposed breasts tremble under the faint glow of the city nightlights. "You'll have to allow me see them. I'll be able to tell."

He frowned, hesitating.

"I won't pry any further than I have to, Ban, but if you want to know, definitively, that these dreams are yours, and not someone else's memories or illusions being shunted off into your mind, then this is the best way. The only way, really. And you can't prevent these visions from haunting your dreams until you know where they're coming from."

Ban cursed again. "What do I do?"

"Go to sleep," she replied, smiling. "I'd ask Himiko for a little sleeping potion, me."

He grumbled, but seeing no alternative, he followed Maria as she sashayed back into the house.

Himiko looked a bit skeptical when he asked her – through gritted teeth – to put him to sleep.

"Sleeping poison is meant to drop someone into an almost catatonic state, Ban, at least temporarily. Even a little too much could knock you out for a week or more, and I guarantee you that you would be too far gone to be dreaming."

"Just enough to make me sleepy, Himiko," he told her resignedly. "Shouldn't be too hard; I've hardly slept the past three nights."

Still looking doubtful, she waved Ginji and Maria out of the room, and popped the cap off one of her vials of poison. She immediately replaced it and caught Ban as his legs gave way.

His tongue tangled up with weariness, he couldn't even protest as she slipped her arms under his knees and shoulders, and lifted him like a child. She called out, and Maria appeared and pointed to a door. Ginji lunged forward to open it, almost tripping in the process, and Himiko carried him into a dark room filled with strange and peculiar things.

Ginji spread some blankets on the floor as Ban fought to remain awake, realizing through the sleepy fog that encumbered him that he hadn't asked Maria not to reveal the content of his dreams to his dumbass partner and the silly kid that smiled like Yamato. His tongue refused to obey the commands of his fading consciousness. He felt Himiko release him, only to crawl away to sit crosslegged at his feet.

Ginji surreptitiously took his hand, trying not to be worried. Ban would have been hard-pressed to know whether to hit his partner or laugh at him, if he'd had the ability to do either.

Maria knelt beside him, and he was as painfully aware of her presence as he was of the other two buffoons. Surrounded by the tools and wares of her trade, she reminded Ban of things he'd tried long and hard to forget, and stirred emotions he wished he could fully remember.

He was suddenly taken back to his childhood in this place, not long after his grandmother had left him in the gypsy's care. Bitter and resentful, the boy Ban had not generally welcomed Maria's indiscriminate – and sometimes inappropriate – affection. But sometimes at night, she sang to him, old ballads about people long dead, and drinking songs whose meaning, if there ever had been meaning, had been forgotten decades or centuries earlier, and lullabies that were even older than the drinking ditties or the ballads. And while he was hovered at the gates of his dreams, her soft-fingered hands would occasionally alight on his brow to stroke his hair, leaving him with a profound sense of sanctuary before he slipped into slumber.

Two gentle fingers touched his forehead, and he was lost.

* * *

_She swayed gently in the water, pulled alternately toward and away from the rocks with the currents and the tides. Light filtered strangely through the water, refracted from the timeworn cliff faces, lighting her pallid flesh with an unearthly glow. For a long while, the water would occasionally pull her just so, and the noon sun would reach just deeply enough that an observer from the surface might have noticed the metallic glint of the bronze chain that bound her to the ocean floor, or the shine of her pale skin under the weak light._

_No more. Her hair had long since grown long enough to knot about the chain in the shifting tides, indeed, the strands of hair that had tangled in the chain encased much of her body in a black cocoon, and thus hid all evidence of her grisly fate. She seldom struggled; there was no point to it, for only time would serve to break her bindings. _

_The masses and masses of black hair that hadn't caught in the chain flowed out around her, floating wildly on the tides, blotting out the weak light that had once trickled down to her. The world of twilight and darkness, intended to be her grave, had become instead a black prison, in which noon was indistinguishable from midnight, winter from summer. She had passed through years, centuries perhaps, thus imprisoned; yet she did not comprehend the passage of time. _

_Movement attracted her in the darkness. She did not open her eyes, though she instinctively turned her face to the disturbed waters. Nothing her prison had presented her with had frightened her, as yet. Nothing could harm her in the depths. Only her soul was vulnerable, and there had been no opposing soul to torment her in a very long time._

_The moving thing reached her, and touched her belly. She remembered how to frown; she was confused. There was nothing in the ocean that felt like that, that had that rough, ribbed texture, and although she remembered the feeling, she could not place it._

_The thing moved again, this time touching her face._

_Her eyes snapped open, though in the darkness they discerned nothing. A hand. A human hand had touched her._

_A silent cry, of fear or for help, she did not know, fell from her lips into the black water. The hand jerked away, and she wept, because it had left her, and because she had forgotten how sweet the feel of another body could be._

_She remembered now, and having remembered, had lost the touch that triggered the memory._

_A new sensation broke into her rediscovered loneliness; she was floating freely, no longer suspended in the water by the bronze chain. _

_Before she could fully comprehend her freedom, the hand returned, and with it a body, a man's body, long and firm and powerful, and the hand felt its way about her waist, bringing an arm behind it. Its legs sliced through the water, propelling her upward, upward, until finally the harsh noon sun split the black locks of her hair and illuminated her closed eyes with an ugly red glare._

_The red glare hurt, and she reached to cover her eyes. Her hair tugged at her scalp; the body was tangled in it – the person, she remembered, the human being that had brought her up from the depths. Despite the pain, she cupped her hands over her eyes and opened them, searching for hand, for the body, for the person._

_A voice – yes, language, speech, she remembered it now, lips that moved and tongues that danced behind teeth to make sounds. It spoke in Greek, and the fragments of the language she had once attempted to learn flooded back, enough that she could understand that it wanted her name and history._

_It – he – untangled itself – himself – from her hair, and sought her face. Yes, she remembered all of this. It – he – cupped a hand beneath her chin, and she almost swooned with the pleasure of the touch, rough and cold though his hands were._

_"Your name," he repeated, rolling her jaw back and forth in his big hand._

_She parted her lips to draw a breath, to speak, but found she could not. Instead she began to retch violently, and seawater poured from her mouth to the sandy shore. He said something that she did not understand, and when her lungs had emptied themselves of their burden of saline, she held her hands over her eyes and caught his gaze._

_"What is your name?"_

_She licked her lips, suddenly disgusted with the traces of salt she tasted there. Taste – she remembered taste, tastes other that salt._

_Her mouth formed her name, and she relished the feeling of moving her tongue and her lips and her jaw, but no voice emerged. She frowned and tried again, forcing air through her mouth._

_A husky whisper finally escaped a throat that had been silent for uncounted years._

_"Merit."_

* * *

_"Merit, bandages!"_

_Asclepius called to her, his voice thick with urgency, and she hastened to his side. "It's too late," she told him gently. "He's gone, Asclepius. I'm sorry."_

_"No," the Greek spat, his dark hair spilling into his eyes. "No, it's not over yet. I'm not finished! I can save him!"_

_"Asclepius."_

_He turned to her, and her heart wrenched to see the desperation on his face. It always happened like this, she mused sadly. In the end, she was the elder, the wiser, no matter how she had relied on him in the beginning._

_"I can," he whispered fiercely. "I can save him."_

_"Even you cannot raise the dead." The note of finality in her tone finally killed the urgency in him, and he sank into her, defeated._

_She stroked his hair, something maternal rising in her breast. Experience was a cruel teacher, and though she tried to serve as a buffer between her idealistic young friend and the cold realities of life, she could protect him only so much._

_He clawed at the dirt with his fearful right hand, fighting tears. The ground gave easily under the powerful grip, and she reached down to stroke the rigid fingers. They relaxed under her touch. She slipped her hand into his._

_"You did all you could. You've nothing to be ashamed of."_

_"I didn't fight. If I had been there –"_

_"He may still have died." She squeezed his hand. "You were here, helping the wounded. Charis was proud of your abilities as a healer. You were precisely where you ought to have been."_

_"It isn't fair." An aquiline nose bit sharply at her collarbone as he buried his face in her shoulder. "I can't give him life any more than I could give you death."_

_"You tried," she pointed out, truthfully, "which is more than most will do. What's more, you care, and that also is more than most are willing to do."_

_She held up his right hand. "This hand, it is a reminder, Asclepius, a reminder that you are not a god. You, in your brilliance, you were able to breathe life into a boy that had drowned, that should have been dead; you made his silent heart beat again. And the gods rewarded with great strength for that. But you are not a god, no matter what greatness you attain. The sorrows that accompany this gift are there to keep that firmly before you." _

_Releasing his hand, she wrapped both arms around the now silently weeping Asclepius. "Child… you can't save them all."_

_He clung to her briefly, and then he dragged her into his arms, as if it were she that required comfort._

"_I will save you. I swear, Merit. If not you, then no one."_

_She laughed softly against his breast. "Do not make promises you cannot keep. Nothing good ever came of that."_

_Asclepius settled his hands on her shoulders and locked his gaze with her own. Though wet trails of spent tears lined his face, he was no longer crying. "Then someone stronger than I. On all that's holy, Merit, your curse will be ended before mine."_

_She shook her head and would have spoken, but he cupped a hand beneath her jaw, forcing her to meet his eyes, eyes that burned with conviction. "I swear." _

_

* * *

_Thank you, everyone who's reviewed! I know this isn't exactly your typical GB fanfic fare, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. So, thank you for your interest, thank you especially for your sweet reviews, and please don't hate me _too_ much for the slow updates.


	5. Midou Ban and the Dreaming Woman

**Midou Ban and the Dreaming Woman**

_A dungeon in Catalonia, fitted with all manner of horrible instruments, caged her for a quarter century. A twelve-year-old boy, cast into the dungeon on charges of witchcraft, broke her manacles and placed their guard under an illusion. They escaped together._

_A lonely tower in the Russian wilds, nearly buried in ivy, crouched hidden among thorn-draped trees. Its single window had been covered with an iron grate; its only door had been bricked up decades before. Within, Merit waited, until woman with the grip of Ophiochus climbed her dark tresses, crumpled the iron grate in her hand, and freed her._

_A secret room below a mosque in India… a sealed chamber in the catacombs beneath Paris… a Roman mausoleum… a collapsed cave in Japan... they could not kill her, and so they hid her, they buried her, they tried to forget the immortal woman. Of her nearly four thousand years of life, a quarter of it had been spent in such isolated prisons, and much of that in the Theban necropolis, before Rehema had rescued her._

_Of these prisons, her grave had been the most unbearable._

* * *

_"Upon my word, what is a pretty little thing like you doing, frittering about in such terrible weather?"_

_The old gentleman patted Amalia on the shoulder, and she smiled at him. "Frittering, sir, as already you have so plainly stated."_

_"Yes, but why, dear girl? Come, come, there is a pub just there," he pointed through the rain at the flickering lamps across the street, "and I shall buy you a cider to warm you."_

_"You are very kind, but I am due in Hertfordshire this evening, and I fear I am already behind schedule. The carriage is late, you see, and my business is most imperative."_

_"How terrible, a girl like yourself burdened with 'imperative business.' Can't imagine what the world is coming to. Lovely accent you have – German, is it?"_

_"Yes, sir."_

_"Ah, splendid, splendid. Your English is impeccable. I suppose must I drink my cider alone, if I cannot persuade you to accompany me. Best wishes for your journey."_

_He turned to leave, but the tinkling of a bell could be discerned over the storm winds, and he paused. "Are you a superstitious girl, young lady?"_

_Amalia smiled, concealing her eyes beneath the cowl of her cloak. "Aren't we all, after a fashion?"_

_"You are wise beyond your years," the old man agreed amiably, but then his face darkened. "Well, if you're the sort to frighten easily, you ought not wait here, beside the cemetery. You heard the bell? That bell's been ringing intermittently for fifty years, now, from the grave of a witch buried here during the reign of George IV."_

_Amalia's smile froze, but did not falter. "Surely it is the wind which moves the bell."_

_"Say what you will, but I was here – I was ten years of age when she was buried. They burned her, shot her, drowned her, poisoned her – but she would not die. So they buried her here, and tied the bell to a string and the string to her finger, so that all would know when she finally passed on. Yet these fifty years, the bell rings, even when there is not a breath of wind in the air."_

_"I shall keep to the street," Amalia promised, and the old man disappeared into the rain._

_"A witch, says you," she said to herself. "A victim, says I." And she pulled her cowl over her face and began to search out the gate to the cemetery._

_In the wind, the bell was difficult to find, and so she looked to the gravestones instead. It was peculiar, she thought, that they had buried a "witch" in a Christian cemetery, but perhaps in their fear, they had hoped for the additional protection their faith could afford them. _

_She found the gravestone she sought; it was blank, except for the symbol of an upside down pentagram. Sure enough, the now-silent bell lay nestled in the grass at the base of the stone, nearly rusted through._

_"Hertfordshire will wait." Already soaked through, she found a secluded space between an old statue and a large, familial mausoleum and sat down on the wet earth, waiting for nightfall._

_When night came, the cold damp kept most people off the streets, and in the dark cemetery, no one noticed the young blond woman digging at the foot of the witch's gravestone. The earth was wet, and no real frost had yet set in, so the soil gave easily beneath Amalia's strong right hand._

_The sun had lightened the clouds considerably when Amalia finally came to the casket buried with the bell. It had caved in somewhat, though all she could see through the splintered wood were the tattered remains of a white garment, and long, bent black strands of hair. She broke the wood further, and stared, speechless, at the sight before her._

_A woman peered up at her through tangled, matted black hair, with a strange expression in her golden eyes. She seemed only a little surprised, rather than shocked or frightened. Wariness crept into her gaze as Amalia searched for her voice. Before she could find it, the other woman spoke._

_"What year is it?" she asked, a profound and terrible calmness in her cracked, broken voice. She raised a shaking hand to her face, and pushed her hair back. _

_"1884." Amalia backed away to allow the so-called 'witch' to sit upright in her coffin. She offered a hand, but it was ignored._

_"Forty-eight years," the woman said softly, as if speaking to herself. "It seemed longer." The remains of her gown, a nightdress which had been, at one point, of a very good quality, were dingy and dirty. She inhaled deeply, then began to cough. A cloud of dust and dirt erupted from her mouth._

_Amalia tried not to gag. "Come," she said. "The sun is rising, and we haven't much time." She stood and once more offered a hand to the ghost-like figure in the coffin. This time, her help was accepted, and she hauled the woman to her feet._

_Black hair tumbled over her, and she could not repress a shudder as the straw-like, dirty strands brushed her skin. The golden-eyed woman pull the hair at the nape of her neck together, and while holding the thick tail in one hand, she pulled the rest of her hair free of the ruined sarcophagus. _

_Amalia reached into her boot. "Here, I shall cut it." She withdrew a tiny dagger from her shoe and began to saw through the tail of hair, so that what remained fell just below the woman's frail shoulders._

_"Now, let's go."_

* * *

Ban bolted upright and smacked his forehead into Ginji's chin. The other Get Backer had been leaning over him, and both rubbed furiously at their faces for a moment.

"Ban-kun…" Maria knelt beside him.

"I know," he said hoarsely, his voice scraping past his throat with reluctance, as if it had been he who had been speechless for unnumbered years. "They're not mine. I guess I knew all along."

Ban was trembling violently. "It's a side-effect of the poison," Himiko said. "Who's the girl in the dream – the long-haired chick?"

"A cursed one," Maria replied softly. "A person who cannot die."

"There are other people like her?" Ginji asked in a sick voice.

"The Witch Queen knew several. In fact, I think the blond girl must have been Amalia Junger, Ban's great-great-grandmother. It seems that Merit has been involved with Ban's family from the beginning. Possibly even the priestess from his earlier dream is also one of Ban's ancestors."

"How do you end a curse like that?" Ban was still shivering from the aftereffects of Himiko's poison. Ginji tried to throw a blanket over him, but he swatted at his partner and shrugged the coverlet off.

"Such curses aren't generic spells, Ban-kun. Each is created with its own unique counter. Eventually, most who are enchanted in that way stumble across the answer, and are able to end their cursed lives. But the counters are specifically designed to be rare events, the kind of thing you could live entire lifetimes without experiencing, and usually, those who are doing the cursing are none too keen to reveal the cure."

Ban stood up on shaking legs. Images of Merit and her many, many prisons danced before his eyes; it felt as if his Evil Eye had been used against him. He shoved the visions away.

"Did you see the last one?" Ban asked. "During the Cold War?"

Maria frowned. "The last memory was from Victorian England, Ban-kun."

He shook his head. "No. It was in Tokyo, in the fifties."

Maria, Ginji, and Himiko looked at one of the relics in the room – a giant mirror, which Ban could only presume was the screen upon which they had witnessed his dreams. "No, Ban-chan," Ginji said uneasily. "We didn't see that."

Ban suddenly felt cold all over, and his shaking worsened. "Ginji…" He stared into the mirror. "Ginji, come on, we're leaving."

"Where are you going?" Himiko grabbed him by the arm, and he shook her off almost absently, trying to remember every detail of his last dream.

"Doesn't concern you," he replied. "Ginji, let's go."

"You should get some rest first," Ginji said, a trace of concern in his tone. "You're shaking like a leaf."

"It'll wear off." He took a step toward the door that entered into the shop and almost stumbled. Ginji caught him easily and, pulling his arm over his shoulders, made his way slowly to the front door.

Ban shook his head and sighed. "You can drive, if you want."

Ginji glanced down with a startled look. "You never let me drive, Ban-chan."

"So take advantage of it. I need to think, anyway." He fumbled in his pocket for the keys and tossed them up to his partner, who caught them easily, but looked extremely nervous nevertheless.

"Are you sure?" Ban glared at him, and Ginji bit his lip. "Okay, then. Himi-chan, Maria-san, I guess we'll see you later," he called over his shoulder. "Thanks, both of you."

"Wait," Himiko called back, running after them. "I'm coming, too."

"You don't even know where we're going, kid," Ban said, reaching for a cigarette. "Besides, I thought you had magical troubles of your own to deal with. We're gone." Raising a still-shaking hand in farewell, he went out into the night, still supported on Ginji's shoulders.

Ginji didn't say much as he drove through the dark streets. Himiko tried to follow them, but under Ban's expert direction, Ginji shook her in no time. Ban lit his cigarette and watched the rearview mirror, just in case her single headlight came into view, but mostly he trolled through the memories of his dreams for the images and information he needed.

"We're going to Chiyoda, Ginji," Ban said after awhile, as they left Maria's neighborhood for the rowdier streets of Tokyo. "The Yasukuni Shrine." He blew out a breath of smoke and lay back in the chair.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather drive?" Ginji's eyes flashed toward him. "It's not that I mind, but I don't want to get us lost."

"Stay on this road for the time being. I'll let you know when to exit."

"Ban-chan?"

"Hmm."

"Why exactly are we going to Chiyoda?"

"If I'm right – and I haven't lost my mind – you'll see when we get there." He took a long last drag of his cigarette and flicked it out the window.

Because of the late hour, traffic flowed relatively smoothly, and Ginji was able to follow Ban's directions to the Yasukuni Shrine with very few mistakes. He did almost get them shot when he tried to drive through the Imperial Palace, but other than that, he drove very well.

"I really can't take you anywhere, Ginji," Ban said with a sigh as they pulled up to the parking garage near the shrine. "What made you think the gates would actually open if you drove close enough to them?"

"It looked like a toll booth!" Ginji retorted defensively.

"Kinda ornate for a toll booth." Ban shook his head and handed his partner several bills, pointing him to the payment booth, much to Ginji's surprise.

"It would be a bad night to have the Ladybug towed," he offered by way of explanation.

"Okay." Ginji's tone was dubious.

They began to walk to the shrine's entrance, and Ban stared at the buildings for a little while before veering away from the gate, and walking along the outer wall.

A light, but firm grip on his shoulder stopped him. "Ban-chan, what's going on? It's dawn, we haven't slept all night – well, not really – and we came all the way to Chiyoda just to look at the shrine? You know I'm behind you, whatever you want to do, but… talk to me, Ban-chan. Please. I want to help."

Ban's mouth twitched, and he ruffled Ginji's hair. "I just needed to get my bearings, Ginji. If my last dream was accurate, then there's a military bunker beneath the shrine."

"This shrine is huge, Ban-chan."

"Yeah. Like I said, I needed to get my bearings. There's a tunnel near the honden. That's what I was looking for."

"Honden?"

Ban sighed with exasperation. "It's just a temple building, okay, Ginji? It's not usually open to the public, but the rest of the shrine is. I needed to find it to know where to look for the tunnel."

"Are we going to break into another shrine, Ban-chan?" Ban said nothing, and Ginji sighed. "Crap, we are, aren't we? Isn't there something… I dunno… sacrilegious about this?"

"Only if you adhere to the Shinto religion. And if you do, it's news to me."

"It's disrespectful."

"So's burying people alive." He continued to peruse the wall, judging the distance between it and the buildings inside, hoping to find a secluded entry point near the honden. He'd directed Ginji to the gate nearest the honden to begin with, but some trees, some alley between buildings – those would be his preferred way to break into the compound.

Suddenly Ginji stopped cold. "Buried… Ban-chan, you don't mean…?"

"Unless someone else freed her." He came to a small grove of trees, several hundred feet from the honden. "Here."

He and Ginji scaled the wall with relative ease, and were neatly hidden in the trees in moments.

"We need to get inside." A priestess was sweeping the grounds, so Ban kept his voice a whisper.

"The bunker is underneath?"

"The tunnel is."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Ginji mused, "since there aren't many people around. Although, the cover of a bunch of tourists might have been nice. Maybe we should have waited a few hours."

"It would be troublesome to sneak out a woman who doesn't know anything about the past sixty years. Her clothes are probably conspicuous, if nothing else."

Ginji suddenly blushed hotly, and Ban rolled his eyes. Merit had not always been clothed in the dreams Maria had broadcast for Himiko and his partner.

"That priestess is way over there now. If we run for it, we can probably make it to that banner thing on the front of the shrine."

"Okay, but quietly."

The Get Backers sprung into action, racing across the courtyard at breakneck speeds, slowing only when they came to the door of the honden, so that their footsteps would not echo on the stairs leading up to it. They ducked inside the sacred building with the priestess none the wiser.

"This way," Ban hissed, not especially astounded by the fact that he knew exactly where he was going. The night had been too weird already, and he didn't have the energy to be surprised anymore.

Voices sounded from further within.

"Shit, we must have caught them in the middle of a dawn ritual." Ban growled softly. He looked quickly about and gestured to a screen. "Get behind that, we'll wait them out. It's a holy place; it'll empty out soon enough."

Ginji sat crosslegged behind the screen, tracing the painted cherry blossom boughs painted on the gilded surface. Ban leaned against the wall behind him, trying not to think about how sleepy he was. To pass the time, he studied the motions of his partner's hand as it passed over the screen, the play of light and shadow on the big knuckles of his glove. Ginji had good hands, manly hands. Ban had a musician's fingers, long and supple and slender, and if his hands were only a little smaller, they might have passed for a woman's. He stared at them sourly for awhile before realizing that the voices had ceased.

Just as he was about to speak, a series of soft footsteps passed by the Get Backers' hiding place, and he bit back his words, hoping hey hadn't been spotted. But the footsteps went on by, and the soft opening and closing of a door indicated the departure of the priest who had made them.

"Alone at last."

With the priests gone, they had free reign of the honden, and it took them no time at all to find the staircase to the lower level.

"The tunnel's here in the basement, on the southern wall," Ban said as they went down the stairs. "In my dream, it had shelves built over it."

"Like those?" Ginji bounded down the stairs in excitement, pointing. Immediately across from the base of the stairwell was a stone wall, with a series of shallow, empty, built-in shelves.

Ban let out the breath he had been holding. "Yeah. That's it."

Ginji went to the shelves and inspected the wall around them. "Is there supposed to be a lever, or a secret mechanism or something, that opens it?"

Ban joined his partner and set his palms against the inset wall, between two shelves. Then he pushed.

With a horrible screech, the section of wall with the built-in shelves began to swing inward.

"Ban-chan, you did it!" Ginji stepped inside, illuminating the darkness with a suppressed electrical charge that spread a pale, diffused light throughout his lanky frame.

Ban followed his partner inside. "I'll be damned. Looks like I haven't lost my mind after all."

Though he remained calm for Ginji's sake, Ban was crowing inwardly. Anything else, he thought, relieved, he could cope with anything else. Ancient curses, immortal women, destiny, anything but that horrible loss of self he had feared. This was a simple case – 'get back Merit's freedom,' (okay, so it might become the more complicated 'get back Merit's mortality') – but at least he wasn't losing his grip on reality.

"Long tunnel," Ginji noted. His stomach grumbled, and he laughed sheepishly. "Ah – guess we should have stopped for breakfast, huh?"

The tunnel was indeed long, and they wandered down the thankfully straight path for a long time. As they walked, neither could help but notice that some of the wooden braces that lined the tunnel walls had rotted through. They passed several rockslides; one was so deep that they had to crawl over the top of it, with only a couple of feet between their backs and the ceiling.

"I hope the tunnel stays up until we get out," Ginji said with a nervous laugh.

"It's still here after sixty, maybe seventy years. It'll hold a while longer," Ban said confidently.

Just as Ban rounded the first and only turn in the tunnel, which opened into a wide, high-ceilinged space and displayed much of a large, rounded, concrete wall, a flash of memory seized him.

_The room was full of serious-faced soldiers, many of them wounded, and sitting among them, equally grim-faced, was a teenaged foreigner with brown, brown skin, golden eyes, bobbed black hair, and full, apricot-colored lips. She wore a nurse's uniform._

_One of the soldiers touched her on the shoulder, and she smiled at him, even as a solitary tear trickled down her face._

"Ban-chan!" Ginji was shaking him. "Ban-chan, snap out of it!"

"Ah… what is it, Ginji?" Ban groused, but his irritation quickly faded. All about them, tumbled over dust-covered tables and chairs, uniformed skeletons and piles of bones littered the floor.

"What… what happened here?" Ginji asked in a weak voice.

Ban's quick eyes had taken in everything there was to see within seconds. On the table furthest from them, a dying soldier had scrawled out a last, desperate message on the back of a technical manual, in hopes that someone might discover and report the massacre someday.

"Gas," Ban read softly. "They were her friends… I imagine that they were killed so no one could protest her being left here."

Ginji shuddered, and looked away from the dozen or so corpses. A heavy metal door was set into the bunker wall. He gestured to it wordlessly, and Ban also turned his back on the dead soldiers, approaching the wall with something akin to trepidation.

The hinges of the steel door were on the inside; the door was designed to swing inward. A palm-sized combination lock built into the door kept the door bolted shut; he grasped the large knob on the dial and pushed down and in, so that the face of the lock slowly bent away from the casing. When he'd bent it enough, he crushed the face and the knob together, so that the lock mechanism was displayed. Twisting the insides around, watching for the telltale jump that signified a correct dialing, he slowly jimmied the lock. Finally, the bolt slid back into the lock.

With a long, level stare at his partner and a deep breath, Ban pushed the door into the bunker. The faint light from Ginji's glowing body illuminated the first few feet of the concrete floor, but what lay beyond was a mystery.

Ban took the step up into the bunker and ventured as far as the reaches of Ginji's light allowed. Stretching a hand into the darkness, he waited, with his stomach in knots, and heart racing.

A tiny hand slipped into his, cool to the touch, and absolutely confident.

A soft, matter-of-fact voice noted, "I've been dreaming about you."


	6. Midou Ban and the Priceless Woman

She would be naked, Ban thought sourly, with an ugly glare at his gape-mouthed partner. Of course she would be naked.

For her part, she was an Eve before the fall, wholly unconcerned with her disrobed state. Her dark hair, neatly braided, trailed behind her into the blackness of the bunker, and Ban couldn't even enjoy the full frontal nudity the bound hair permitted him to view, because she didn't seem the least bit embarrassed. There was nothing demure or coy in her manner, and certainly nothing that bespoke shame. She was simply unclothed.

Her utter calm rubbed him wrong, and he released her hand to shed his shirt, suddenly anxious to cover her nakedness.

An sudden, unexpected humor flashed into her golden eyes. "Did I make you uncomfortable? I apologize. That's hardly the way to repay one's rescuer."

His tongue twisted uselessly behind his teeth, and he handed her the shirt without a word.

Tiny, deft fingers worked the buttons into their buttonholes, and when she had finished, the end result left Ban feeling just as flustered as before.

The shirt was long on Ban, but she was several inches shy of five feet tall. The shirttails brushed her ankles and the sleeves fell just below her wrists. It ought to have been very cute, or very sexy, and it was neither, because she was neither. And that also rubbed him wrong, because she _was_ beautiful, and every beautiful woman he had _ever_ known was either cute or sexy.

"She's like the Statue of Liberty," Ginji marveled, apparently completely unaware that she could hear him.

A quizzical furrow appeared between her perfect black brows. "I beg your pardon?"

"He means the Venus de Milo," Ban found himself saying, and cursed himself for knowing exactly what his partner meant in referencing the archaic work of art.

"Ah." A pleased smile turned up her apricot lips. "Well, isn't that nice. Thank you, Ginji-san."

Ginji grinned. "You know my name."

She nodded, still smiling faintly. "Recently I've had the strangest dreams. I suppose I am glad they were not the imaginings of a deranged mind."

"You suppose?" Ban snorted. He'd retreated from her uncomfortable… whatever it was… to lean against the wall opposite her.

"I witnessed a great deal of tragedy in my dreams," she replied candidly, unaffected by his rudeness. "If all I saw truly happened, then I wish some of those events had been no more than nightmares."

"You were dreaming about my life, I suppose. Just as I was dreaming about yours." That really made him uneasy. No one – no one, not Ginji, not Himiko, not Paul – no one knew Ban's full story. He wanted it that way. His past was a heavy thing, and though he probably wouldn't have admitted it, it bothered him that anyone but himself might be weighed down with it.

"I was." The smile slipped away from her mouth. "Oh…" She'd caught sight of the uniformed skeletons.

Ban cursed himself again. He ought to have moved the damn things – he should have thought of it. He could have – ought to have – spared her the gruesome sight. Especially considering that, more than likely, the dead soldiers had been acquaintances of hers.

She stepped down from the bunker, moving with an easy fluidity that wasn't exactly grace, but more an economy of motion. Her braid trailed behind her, heavy and thick on the floor.

She murmured something in a guttural tongue Ban did not understand, and went to stand amidst the soldiers, a lonely ghost among the empty shells of old friends.

"They knew about me," she said quietly, after a moment's pause, "because I shielded one of them with my body during an especially violent shelling of the hospital where I tended wounded soldiers. He was saved, and each of the witnesses swore to keep my secret. But the truth will out, as they say, it always does; I was discovered."

"Did one of them betray you?" Ginji asked, stricken.

She smiled, but sadness lingered on her lips. "I'm sure he didn't mean to. And if he did, it would seem that he was punished more than amply." Her eyes fell closed, and Ban watched her cold-hardened nipples rise and fall in a silent, strangely labored breath. He knew that feeling, the weight of grief pressing in so closely that it felt as though you couldn't breathe.

"We should go," he said, after debating whether or not to interrupt her silent mourning. There was a melancholic beauty to it, and it entranced him. And that further set him on edge. She captured his imagination, robbing him of conscious thought just as her memory had robbed him of his dreams. He suddenly had a million things he wanted to ask her about – the most beautiful things she had ever seen, the most disgusting food she had ever eaten, the most peculiar custom she had ever participated in, the most interesting person she had ever met…

"He's right," Ginji agreed apologetically, touching Merit lightly on the shoulder. "The shrine is probably already crawling with tourists, and I don't think we necessarily want the priests here to know that we were exploring one of their sacred buildings."

She opened her eyes, but the shine of tears he had expected was not there. "As you wish. Is there…" she paused, considering, "is there someone I can report this to? Is there anything that can be done, so long after the fact?"

"The men who did this are probably long dead. It's 2008, Merit. December, if you want to know."

"I was hoping to be surprised as to the season," she replied abstractedly, but without a trace of rebuke in her tone, "but never mind that. These men ought to be returned to their families, at the very least."

Had he ruined something special for her, he wondered, stricken, his mind rambling again. Was it important, after a half century of imprisonment, to be caught off-guard by rain, or snow, or wind?

Ban shook himself out of his thoughts, and forced himself to answer. "Yes... the uniforms have names on them, so it shouldn't be too hard to locate the families of soldiers who were reported MIA."

She smiled then, and every muscle in Ban's body froze. The warmth of the gratitude in her eyes rivaled Ginji's sunniest grin, but Ginji's exuberance had been replaced by a profound intelligence, and something else, something akin to wisdom, but so far surpassing wisdom that he couldn't name it, let alone recognize it. He felt as though he had just made an offering to some ancient, distant god, and had been unexpectedly rewarded with a glimpse of the god's face. The feeling unsettled him more than ever, and he forced his eyes away from the long-haired woman.

"That's something we've never gotten back before, Ban-chan." Ginji stretched out a hesitant hand to one of the skeletons, but thought better of it. "I know those families will be happy to have their granddad's or uncle's remains back."

Ginji's familiar spirit brought Ban back to earth, and he had to repress a smile. Having decided that the old bones were part of a mission, Ginji wouldn't rest until he'd completed the job, no matter how the skeletons frightened him.

Merit turned her immortal smile on Ginji, who seemed rather less affected than Ban. "Thank you, Ginji-san."

A sudden surge of jealousy slammed into Ban's gut, and he swallowed hard, trying to figure out where exactly the feeling had come from.

Ah. She hadn't used his name yet, only Ginji's. Twice. Although why that would make him jealous, Ban had no idea. She was absinthian, and in the confusion she roused in him, the usual rules that governed his thoughts and emotions no longer seemed to apply.

She was watching him, and he jerked himself to attention. "Midou Ban-sama," she said then, "I am ready whenever you are."

Ginji led them back down the tunnel, glowing, chatting up Merit, who only smiled sweetly in return, drinking up the chatter like so much wine. In her eyes, there was a mild regret, as though she were savoring something she knew would not last for very long. Ban dragged along behind them, seething.

It was supposed to get easier. No more creepy dreams, no more haunted ugly memories from someone else's life. No more thinking he was going crazy.

And now he was _certain_ he was losing it. No one but Ginji had ever disturbed his sense of control so badly. And that was different, that was a… a circumstantial loss of control – his unpredictable partner got them into all sorts of scrapes, and it was invigorating, because alone, he would have had everything planned out from the beginning, and what fun would that be? With Ginji, he got to think on his feet, which he enjoyed – alone, there was never any need to do so.

This was like being in the power of another, in service to a greater being, an unwilling devotee to a peculiar faith. And she, like any god, was completely indifferent to his wonderment. He suddenly understood the concept of fanaticism far more intimately than he had ever cared to, the helplessness of total enthrallment with something greater than oneself.

Because she was, wasn't she? She was more, much more, than anyone he had ever met. The experiences of hundreds of lives, the knowledge of unnumbered cultures – the sheer wisdom she must have stored within her small, perfectly shaped head, behind her golden eyes – the weight of her presence was terrifying.

Why hadn't he expected that? He should have. He should have known how different she would be.

Was it because he'd seen her life from her perspective – could it be that she did not understand how unique she was? How completely inhumane she was?

"And there's planes… were there planes in World War Two? Have you seen planes before, Merit-san?" Ginji, the dolt, felt nothing of Ban's awe.

Humor tugged her lips further upward, but the faint sadness in her eyes had not faded. "A few, Ginji-san."

"But not computers, right? You'll love computers, anything you could possibly want to know you can find out in seconds."

"Geez, Ginji, you're going to run out of things to tell her about before we get to the end of the tunnel," Ban complained, still trying to shake his senses free of the hold she had unwittingly placed upon them.

"I doubt it," she answered, turning her head back to him. "It seems the world has changed a very great deal in sixty-five years." Her eyes fixed on him briefly, then followed the thick ropey cord of her braid back into the shadows. Neither he nor Ginji had thought to cut it. Not that either of them had anything to cut it with.

"People are still people. Usually even stupider in large groups than they are alone. There's still hunger and disease and greed and selfishness, so, no, it hasn't changed all that much." He almost spat the words, and shuddered at the violence that had risen in him. The power she held over him frightened him, and his usual response to fear was anger. This was an awful lot of anger.

His outburst didn't shake her at all, and he found himself flushing in the darkness, as though he'd smarted off to an especially mild-mannered teacher.

"Ban-chan," Ginji chided, eyes dark with disapproval.

"You're awfully young to be so certain of yourself." Merit looked away. "I suppose it's understandable, but even so, it seems a very regrettable waste of your potential."

"Just what do you mean, lady?" he demanded. Actually, anger was good, he decided. Taking offense at her words made her somehow more approachable, more human.

"It means," she replied evenly, "that cynicism is the refuge of an injured soul. If the world is unchangeable, there is a sound justification for not attempting to change it for the better, and therefore no reason to risk further injury. It is an old man's apology for his inaction in his youth, or perhaps for his mistakes. You cannot have seen enough to know for certain that the world cannot be improved. Your pessimism is, at best, premature, and at worst, a wrongful interpretation of the way of things."

He opened his mouth to spit back some smart remark or other, but couldn't find the words. She spoke with such simple certainty that he knew no protest he might have made could have changed her mind. Unable to reply, he lowered a fierce glower on her, to which she responded with a rueful, suddenly very human smile.

She bowed apologetically. "Forgive me, Midou Ban-sama. Truth is not always what is needed, after all, and we are all of us entitled to our delusions. Life is difficult enough to navigate without someone like me punching holes in the philosophy that keeps you afloat."

"Merit-san's awesome." Ginji grinned. "I've been thinking the same thing, I just didn't ever know how to say it. You think Ban-chan's too smart to be so cynical, too, don't you?"

Ban turned his glower on his partner, who cringed and dodged behind Merit. Merit laughed, and Ban's anger dissipated in the chiming, ringing sound, in the very brief pleasure that lit the woman's golden eyes.

"I knew someone like you, once upon a time, Ginji-kun," she said, smiling down at the Get Backer who cowered at her feet. "She also divined more than she was able to express in words. But her actions always supported her beliefs, as unutterable as they were. Like her, you are a rare find, and Midou Ban-sama is a fortunate man to have stumbled upon someone like you. I consider myself blessed, to have encountered such a spirit twice in my life."

Dammit, he couldn't find fault with that. If it was awkward, it was equally true, and he didn't have the energy to pretend that it wasn't. He was lucky to have Ginji, and she was lucky he had Ginji, too, because without him, Ban probably never would have ended up here, in this dusty dark hole with its secrets and its skeletons, and its buried treasure.

Buried treasure? Ban pulled a face. He was thinking in metaphors, and that was never a good sign. He needed sleep – real sleep – badly.

He opened his mouth to tell his partner and the woman who was driving him mad to get a move on, but before he could speak, he felt an ominous rumbling beneath his feet.

"Ban-chan! The tunnel!" Ginji reached to grab his hand and Merit's, then broke into a sprint. There was a flash of bewilderment in Merit's eyes, but she kept pace with him and did not relinquish his hand.

The thunderous clamor of the tunnel as it collapsed behind them grew louder, and Ban knew without looking that the rotted wooden braces were snapping under the increased weight of their loads like dominoes, one after the other. He picked up his pace and motioned to Ginji to do the same. He would snatch Merit up and carry her; even burdened with her weight he would be faster than –

There was no need, because she sped up to match paces with them again, racing like a gazelle –

Hey, she was matching their paces… was she moving slower than she was able, to stay with them?

They were flying, but the domino effect was faster, the braces were snapping at their heels –

Ginji's laces were coming loose, and he knew it, because he gripped tighter –

Neither he nor Merit had released Ginji's hands. It surprised him that he didn't want to.

That was stupid, she ought to run faster if she could, but she really didn't have to because it wouldn't hurt her even if the tunnel did collapse, but she would be stuck again for God knew how long, but if she knew that, why wasn't she running faster?

Really? A gazelle? God, he needed sleep.

Ban's brain was in overdrive, racing down several trains of thought at once. He saw and noticed everything, from Ginji's shoelaces that threatened to untie themselves, to the intoxicating bounce of Merit's small round breasts beneath his shirt, the smell of dirt and dust and the damp, wet scent of rotting wood, and everything his mind gathered up pointed to one undeniable conclusion.

It was going to be close. If they made it at all.

The collapsing tunnel was nearly caught up with them. A brace buckled just as they passed; Merit jumped ahead of them and turned suddenly, so quickly Ban could scarcely process the event that had forced the action. A thick, splintered stake of wood flew at them, propelled by the weight of the falling dirt and stone.

The jagged wood landed ineffectually at Merit's immortal flesh, and it took Ban only a moment to realize that if she hadn't moved, the broken brace would have thrust cleanly into Ginji's right side. As it was, a long gray silver of wood had lanced his upper arm.

He would have liked to have thanked her, had there been time enough, but the next brace on the other side, on his side, was faltering. In a fraction of a second, the wood would splinter, landing him in the same predicament as his partner.

She saw it. Quick as lightning, she released Ginji's hand and darted around behind him, racing to Ban's side, prepared to take the brunt of the exploding, fracturing wood.

For Ban, time stopped.

Almost idly, he wondered how many times before she had stepped in, taken the beating meant for someone else.

Had anyone done the same for her? Had anyone ever looked past the unyielding, diamond-hard skin, and seen the woman beneath?

In that moment, he knew, with a conviction he could not describe, that the woman behind him was no goddess. She desired, needed, all of the things any human being deserved, simply by virtue of being a human being.

She wanted friendship, needed to be loved. To be useful. To have dreams and to work toward them. To feel disappointment and the exhilaration of overcoming defeat. Those and those other thousands of intangible things he had lost, until he and Ginji had formed the partnership that had become so central to his very existence.

In their early days, someone – Yakuza, probably – had been shooting at them. Not a big deal. Ban dodged gunfire like children dodged balls. But Ginji hadn't known that. He'd dragged Ban out of the line of fire, taking a bullet through the meaty part of his shoulder and chest, just above the shoulder blade, just beneath the collarbone.

That feeling had been indescribable, but something Ban had been missing, something he had been desperately searching for, without even realizing it, something precious had materialized in Ginji's ignorant heroism.

He was valued. Deeply, sincerely, profoundly valued. Worth risking a life for – and not any life, but Ginji's, which was priceless. And that meant, to someone, he was also priceless.

Mentally, he apologized to his partner, wishing him all of the best that life had to offer, and wondered just when he'd gotten so soft. That was Ginji's fault, turning him into this philosophical bag of mush. And Ban was overwhelmingly grateful for it.

The mouth of the tunnel was just ahead. He snatched Ginji's hand and flung him forward. Ginji skidded safely into the basement.

She was nearly around him, between him and the fracturing brace. He turned on her, wrapped his arms around her narrow shoulders, before she could circle him.

The brace shattered; the upper half of the broken brace flew toward him, an image he felt as a rushing wind. His back was exposed to the exploding wood.

Merit was cradled protectively in his arms.

Ginji screamed. Merit flinched; her tiny form tightened against him at the sound, knowing instinctively that Ginji's suffering had only begun. And that was all Ban remembered.


End file.
